The number of overdose deaths in Kentucky last year dropped by 30.2% — down to 1,410 lives lost — giving state leaders a surge of confidence that prevention and treatment efforts are making progress against an addiction epidemic they say is shattering families across the state.
This was the third straight yearly decrease in drug overdose deaths for the state, although prior declines were substantially smaller. Kentucky has long been plagued by high rates of addiction to opioid painkillers, and fatal overdoses surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when treatment was hard to get and people were socially isolated.
